Dr. Guangbo Hao earned his Bachelor Degree of Engineering (overall ranking No. 1 among 500 students), Master Degree of Engineering (recommended for immediate admission), and Doctor Degree of Engineering (successive master-doctor program, first PhD) all from Northeastern University (NEU), China, in July 2004, March 2007 and July 2008, respectively. In September 2011, he was awarded his second PhD Degree after a subsequent three-year fully-funded study in Mechanical Engineering at Heriot-Watt University (HWU), UK.

With his recognized record of accomplishments, he was directly selected to join the School of Engineering-Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Cork (UCC) in November 2011, to take a permanent full-time faculty position of Lectureship in Mechanical Engineering). He was then promoted across the lecturer merit bar in October 2017 in an accelerated way due to his performance commended by the UCC Lecturer Promotion & Establishment Board. He was further promoted to a Senior Lecturer in July 2018 followed by a Professor* in April 2024 at UCC (being the first Professor in Mechanical Engineering at UCC). He is the founder and leader of the UCC CoMAR research group, the director of Mechatronics/Robotics Lab, and the founder of UCC Engineering Maker Lab. His current research interests focus on design of compliant mechanisms and robotics and their innovative applications such as machine intelligence, precision manufacturing, energy harvesting, medical devices, inspections, and deployable structures (i.e. Compliant Mechanisms Engineering). He has proposed some promising design and modelling frameworks/methods such as the Position-Space-based design, modelling and optimization of General Compliant Beams and Mechanisms. His research works were indicated by more than 200 peer-reviewed publications (most published in top-tier journals such as International Journal of Robotics Research) and more than 30 invited talks (9 keynote/plenary/invited in international conferences/workshops), and by successfully securing over €1.4m competitive research funding from various funding bodies including Research Ireland/SFI/IRC, EU Horizon 2020, Enterprise Ireland and Royal Irish Academy. He has supervised/co-supervised 9 PhD students, 11 research-master students, and 4 taught-master students with Distinction to competition of their theses/projects, as well as having supervised/mentored 5 long-term visiting PhD students and 5 visiting scholars/professors at UCC. He is the academic mentor of a previous group member who was recently awarded a highly prestigious 2-year IRC Postdoctoral Fellowship as an International Awardee (less than 3-5% successful rate). 

He is an ASME Fellow (2022 Oct.) and an Elected Member of the ASME DED Division Mechanisms and Robotics Committee. Dr. Hao has been an academic associate in Tyndall National Institute, and a visiting academic staff at University College Dublin. He was the Secretary of the Irish Manufacturing Council (IMC) for 3.5 years. He has acted as an external reviewer of 10 international grants from countries such as Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, and Poland; and a peer reviewer for dozens of prestigious journals such as Engineering, IEEE T-RO, MSSP, Nat. Commun, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, Adv. Funct. Mater. and Soft Robotics. He has been an external examiner of 6 PhD theses in Canada, France, Denmark, UK and Ireland. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of Mechanical Sciences for 6.5 years. He is serving as an Associate Editor of Advanced Equipment (ELSP), ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and of Mechanism and Machine Theory, and an overseas editorial board member of Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering. He has been the General Chair of the prestigious ASME IDETC/CIE 2025 (about 772 presentations and more than 1000 registrations) in Anaheim of USA, the Program Co-Chair, the General Chair and a Program Chair in the ASME IDETC/CIE 45th (2021), 46th (2022), and 47th (2023) Mechanisms & Robotics Conferences, respectively. He has been an Associate Editor of 2017-2019 IEEE IROS, 2025 AIM, and 2025&2026 ICRA conferences. He served as a Program Chair in the 2018 4th IEEE/IFToMM international conference on Reconfigurable Mechanisms and Robots (ReMAR), and the Chair of Compliant Mechanisms workshop in the 2021 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, a local Co-Organizer and IPC member of the 2023 15th World Congress on Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization in Cork, and the chair of the 2023 2nd Forum for Chinese PhD students in Ireland. Currently, He is serving as a Programme Co-chair of 2026 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2026) in Genoa, and the Conference Chair of 22nd China-Europe International Symposium on Software Engineering Education (CEISEE 2026) in Cork.

He has been a recipient of a dozen of research accolades including: two postgraduate research prizes in a row presented by Heriot-Watt University (2009&2010), the solo winner of the Young Engineers Research Paper Prize 2012 (3rd Prize) jointly presented by IMechE and Engineers Ireland, the Royal Irish Academy Charlemont Award for 2015, the solo winner of the 2017 ASME Compliant Mechanisms Award in Application, the joint winner of the 2018 ASME Compliant Mechanisms Award, and the joint winner of the 2022 ASME Compliant Mechanisms Award (most frequent recipient of this major accolade in the field) and 10 Leading Chinese Talents on Science and Technology Leaders in Europe 2025 (presented in UCPAE Europe Forum). He was awarded the 2018 National Young 1000 Talents Plan in China. He has received the UCC President’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching 2023 and is the joint winner of the UCC Research Supervisor of the Year in the UCC Research & Innovation Awards 2024. His research group has a track record of 50+ awards/prizes. PhD students under his supervision won the 2nd place in the ASME Student Mechanism & Robot Design Competition, twice in a row (2021 and 2022), the winner of the euspen Heidenhain Scholarship, twice in a row (2024 and 2025) and the winner of UCC School of Engineering and Architecture Postgraduate Research Publication of the Year twice in a row (2023 and 2024). His name has been on the list of the Stanford/Elsevier's Top 2% Scientist Rankings for the Career 5 times and for the Single Year 6 times (2025 Rank: 84598, with Rank in the SubField (Design Practice & Management): 57 out of 11514 authors). He was selected to be a Top Scholar by ScholarGPS-prior 5 years (2024 and 2025). He has been a Plenary/Keynote/Invited Speaker at the 2016 French Workshop on Compliant Mechanisms in Paris, the 3rd China Workshop on Compliant Mechanisms in Guangzhou (2018), the 12th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications in Shenyang (2019), and the 2020 ASME Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS) conference (online), the 2025 International Conference on Compliant Mechanisms in China, and 2025 IEA Wind “Automated Robotics for Wind Farms” Topical Expert Meeting #118.

Mechanical Systems

CAD/CAM

Advanced Robotics